https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/systemic-social-justice-activism-college-campuses-jay-bergman/
Amidst considerable fanfare, Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) announced recently the creation of the John Lewis Institute for Social Justice. In a formal statement marking the occasion, Zulma Toro, the president of CCSU, claimed that the university’s mission was “to prepare students to be thoughtful, responsible, and successful citizens.”
At first glance, this objective seems incontestable, and the advocacy of social justice an excellent means of achieving it.
But when one delves deeper into the purpose of the institute, and learns what exactly social justice means to those who established it, it becomes clear that the institute is a vehicle for turning students into political activists advancing left-wing causes: the next sentence in the president’s statement acknowledges that the institute was created to satisfy students’ desire “to become more informed and involved in social justice initiatives after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.”
That in the absence of any juridical determination one would describe these two deaths as “killings” is consistent with the common misconception that white police are generically racist and kill black Americans in large numbers because of their skin color. The truth is the exact opposite: according to Peter Kirsanow, a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, in 2016 police shot to death 16 unarmed black victims and 22 unarmed white victims – while in the same year making 408,873 arrests for violent crime.
The same disparity between perception and reality applies to the larger indictment of America that the creators of the institute apparently share: that our country is “systemically” racist, and absent the intervention of social justice activists like those the institute seeks to generate, irredeemably so.
This charge is false as a matter of evidence and contradictory as a matter of simple logic.